


Liosalfar

by lferion



Category: Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Genre: Elves, M/M, Other, Prequel, Yuletide, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment of illumination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liosalfar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_antichris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_antichris/gifts).



> Written for the _antichris as a Yuletide 2008 Treat. Upload #2277, 24 Dec 2008.  
> Thank you karanguni, beta-reader of lightning swiftness.
> 
> In a world with Svartalfar, would there not be Liosalfar as well?

There are stories one does not tell, except to those one loves. There are tales that are told only to the wind and the stars and the light in the eyes of one's wolf. Skjaldwulf Snow-Soft, Brother to Mar, wolfjarl, lover and skald has two such tales. This is one of them.

Once, when Skjaldwulf was Aelfric Skaldsson, before black Mar took him as his brother, he saw a dazzle of light in the snow that was not the sun. Nor was it the moon nor the stars nor firelight reflected, but a silver spark that danced among the drifts and led him through the winter-barren trees that ringed the steading where he wintered with his father and out into the cold, bright glitter of the ice. It was the long night of the depth of winter, and the steading huddled in the North of the world, and far from any wolfheall. Aelfric had no business being out, but that the stead-hall was crowded and loud and the tales being told he knew too well. He had gone to relieve himself, and then had followed the song of the silence until the light found him. There was a ring of shimmering fire dancing there, the light that usually bannered the sky in ribbons of green and red and gold come down to earth, and he drew near.

He was never sure if he fell up or stepped through a fissure in the ice or air, but found himself inside the light, the music, swept into the dance, terrified and exhilarated. There were voices in the notes, gathering in his ears.

"The snow-song-child steps the dance with us"

"Not a child, Leaf-light, not a child at all. This one is man-come."

Aelfric felt heat blossom and burn in his loins, remembering the way Dag and Hrolf had wrestled with him in the furs, boys but a season older than he, and proud of the scant but growing curls that furred between their thighs, the flesh that hardened, heated, spilled at eager touch. He had known the pleasure of his own hand but not that of another's, and would not soon forget what it felt like to have the slick and burning length of another move between his thighs, to be pressed against by narrow, bucking hips and held by hard, encircling arms, his own seed bursting forth in sticky strands to mingle on another's belly. No girl had ever made him feel so fiercely hard, so gladly eased as careless Dag and half-grown Hrolf.

It seemed his clothes had melted in the light and become as gossamer, insubstantial as a veil of frost. The flames of dancing light were teasing at his skin, and oh, he burned with music and desire.

"Look how he leaps to greet us!"

"Oh he is a singer, true and eager!"

"The wolves would welcome such a one - they know this need."

Their voices were as bells of ice and glass and silver, their touches sleet and molten gold, bringing him to ecstasy and nigh unto despair at the beauty of it. His flesh convulsed, pulling strands of fire through his veins. He arched and writhed and cried out in the dazzling whirl, tossed from shape to brighter shape around the circle of them, until one seemed to fold him close in cooler fire.

"It is ice you will love, ice-eyes and iron will, but it is not the ice that will love you, but rather fire." And here the voice that chimed in his ear even as the bright white hands explored his heated skin paused, and drew another surge of feeling from him with fiery touch. "Though life did begin in that joining. Frost fixes flame, but so does fire unfreeze ice. It is not hopeless. And love has as many forms as ice and fire both." Here the bells laughed and it seemed he burned so hot and bright that he must burst under that attention, mere flesh and bone and blood dancing in the company of the folk of the air, in the aether that was their earth.

They were playing with him, and he understood that this was not his world, that he could not stay, but oh, he would remember. Mouths like gledes pressed kisses to his flesh, his lips, his throat, breast and back and all his secret places, setting embers burning, sparks that sank into his very bones, until he felt as if he must be ash upon the wind, music and desire played into the shape that formed a man, and not a human man at all.

Just as he felt that he must unravel into nothingness (and almost did he wish it, to be one with all this light and song and flame, never cold, and never set apart, alone, unwilling obligation, taught for duty, not for love) the light-elves (O fickle sprites, mere children playing in the snow) left him with one last kiss that burned against his breast and the tender flesh of inner thigh.

"You cannot sing of us, you know. But we will hear your songs!"

"Seek the wolves, snow-singer! They will know your worth!"

Then they were gone.

Aelfric came to himself in a snowdrift, bundled all awry in his furs and wool, sticky dampness cooling quickly between his legs. His throat burned and tears iced his cheeks, his lashes. He stumbled up, nearly blind in the still and ordinary dark of night. Even the stars seemed dim, and the torches of the stead-hall were hardly lights visible at all. He pulled himself together. Just as he could not have lived in the aether with the liosalfar, he could not live for long in the midwinter night outdoors.

No one marked his return, for indeed he had been gone hardly longer than it took to use the privy and stand a moment under the winter-solstice stars, breathing in the cold that fanned the northern lights. Not even Dag or sharper Hrolf took note that Aelfric was no longer quite the boy-almost-a-man that he had been before, though they asked about the burn that marked his thigh (and he returned a different answer every time they asked) and took some delight in pestering Gerd-the-cook for goose-fat to dress it with.

When, in the spring, the wolfheall sought for tithe-boys, Aelfric was the first to heed the call, and none would say him nay; all understood that he would go to be a brother to the wolves, and sing their songs.


End file.
